5 Batch Cooking Recipes for Healthy, Affordable Home-Cooked Meals

Is spending less on eating out on your list of resolutions this year? Maybe you just want to be sure you know exactly what’s in your food and want to keep things healthy. Either way, if finding the time to cook is an issue for you, you might want to try batch cooking (also known as making freezer meals). While it will require a sizable freezer, it’ll mean you can do one-time-big-time sessions in the kitchen and possibly have enough food to last you a week or two.

Scroll down for a few batch cooking recipes we’ve found that you might want to try.

1. Burrito Bowl

You’ll need a slow cooker for this, and while the tutorial mentions that you can use fresh salsa, it’s easy enough to make your own. If you’re planning on bringing this to work as your baon, you’ll find it’s easy enough to store this dish in ready-to-go containers, too.

2. Oven-Baked Chicken Breast

What’s better than having a good-looking guy teach you how to make healthy food? Following along with him and ending up with a week’s worth of meals! If you find plain chicken breast a little bland or boring for day-to-day meals, you can spice things up by adding the salsa recipe listed above or other herb sauces you can make.

3. Homemade Chili

Chili is one of the best dishes to batch cook since it keeps well and is very flavorful. This is a basic version that uses turkey meat, although the original recipe calls for ground beef. You can serve chili on its own, top it with cheese, have it with bread or rice or crackers or tortilla chips, or pair it with something with a milder flavor (like maybe the chicken breast above).

4. Lasagna Rollups

Who doesn’t love lasagna? In fact, we’d just love to have lasagna a few times a week, and this recipe lets you do just that—or at least have lasagna rollups, which give you the same flavor with somewhat less of the pasta. But if you’re still worried about how healthy this is, you can replace your regular lasagna noodles with whole wheat or veggie ones, which are readily available at many supermarkets.

5. Cilantro Lime Chicken

Here’s another slow cooker meal you might enjoy. Now, don’t forget when you’re shopping for ingredients that cilantro is also known as coriander. And if you can’t find it using either name, you can also ask for yansoy.

Looking for even more recipes? Just do a search for freezer meals or batch cooking, and you’ll find a wealth of resources online. We’ve even found videos that let you cook seven or eight different freezer meals in two hours, which means you could find yourself with enough meals for yourself and your family for two or three weeks, freezer space permitting.